Concepts of Creation: Ironhawk Suddenly Wins!

[PashaDawg]

Well, forts on those VP provinces would have avoided the problem.

[Ironhawk]

Heheheh, thanks guys. Sorry to take your battles from you... I actually do feel bad about that. I know that some of you were fighting some hot and heavy wars. If it makes you feel any better, I actually had some preparation to hold enough of those provinces to win for a single turn. On the possibility that some of my raids would fail and I would fall short by one VP, you know? Like 3-4k gold in the bank to buy absurd amounts of PD. And arch theurgs waiting to teleport in to support endangered provs.

Moral of the story: Never trust the astral player in a VP game

[Ironhawk]

The players who werent on the recieving end of my attacks might like an explaination of how I managed to pull this off since they didnt get to see it first hand. Long story short, I attacked every single non-water un-fortified VP province that was left on the map in a single turn. My forces included a load of heavily armed SCs, a couple of arch theurg hit-squads, and a pair of conventional armies. SCs and theurgs all cloud trap'd or teleported to their destinations and the regular armies just attacked as normal.

The SCs in question were 5 Harbingers and a single Angel of Wrath. These forces attacked every 2 and 3 vp province available. I basically invested every gem in my entire treasury summoning and equipping them very heavily. The key with them is that they had 3 Air magic! So, not only could the Cloud Trapezee but they could cast Mistform/Mirror Image in combat. Extremly potent!

In addition, 3 arch theurg hit-squads composed of 5-6 men each attacked the remaining 1vp provs that were too far to reach with conventional armies. I scripted them to spam Thunderstrikes and handed out about 70 air gems to them as a whole for spell boosting. An astonishing amount of gems, but hey - it got the job done.

[quantum_mechani]

Go Ironhawk! I'm so happy I don't have to worry about getting my turns in anymore.

[Xox]

Please remember this game when people argue for a low threshold of victory point provinces to win. 40% was too low.

Very spectacular job though Ironhawk. I have got to hand it to you. Kudos.

[Sheap]

I suppose Xox has some point although I think Ironhawk managed to easily exceed any plausible VP threshold. I haven't counted exactly but you would have needed a 60-65% threshold to prevent this, of course, if things were that tight he might not have launched the attack. Expecting a player to control more than 40% of the game map before winning is too high, but, apparently, 40% of VP provinces does not correlate to 40% of the map. I assumed when I was laying out the game that VP provinces would be heavily defended and not likely to be at risk from a raid.

What really happened is Ironhawk looked closely at the victory conditions and realized he could satisfy them and no one else did this, either because they were too busy with warfighting to build the necessary raiding parties, or because they lacked resources or magic to build the necessary raiding parties, or because they just didn't see it. Simultaneously no one defended their VP provinces! If just one of the two 3-VP provinces, and a couple of 2-VPs, or both of the 3-VPs, had been castled, the attack would have been thwarted. Yet no one castled these extremely valuable provinces!

I suppose to some degree that was also my fault as the original war between Caelum and Oceania, back on, like, turn 4, was touched off due to a battle over building a castle on one of those 3-VP provinces. The other one - Pangaea's IIRC - wasn't contested and could have easily been castled. For shame.

I intentionally created a handful of multi-VP provinces to encourage combat. Which it did. I would never have attacked Oceania so early in the game over a 1-VP province. And he might not have come out of the water to get it. However this also made it possible for Ironhawk to win by raid.

Of course, one problem in dom3 is that castles cost a king's ransom. No one WANTS to build a castle on a VP province unless it's also a good economic province. I know the southeastern 3VP province was in crappy terrain. I don't remember about the northwestern one.

Cumulative VPs prevent this particular problem, but introduce their own issues.

When I laid out the game I specifically avoided making capitals VP provinces thinking capitals were valuable enough, and not requiring a potential winner to fight a zillion capital sieges would make the game more interesting.

There's also perhaps something of a "tragedy of the commons" going on. It might be possible for some players to realize the world's VPs are underdefended, but no one really wants to sound the alarm because they will be wanting to attack those VPs later.

So, in summary, I only partly agree with Xox. The victory conditions weren't perfect, although I think the flaw is with the nature and geography of the VPs rather than the number of them. However, the actions of the players are really what made this possible. No one defended their VP provinces, and one of the game's economically and magically strongest nations was left in peace to build a force capable of launching this attack.

I'll leave the server up for a day or two with turn generation off.

[Ironhawk]

Sheap said:
So, in summary, I only partly agree with Xox. The victory conditions weren't perfect, although I think the flaw is with the nature and geography of the VPs rather than the number of them. However, the actions of the players are really what made this possible. No one defended their VP provinces, and one of the game's economically and magically strongest nations was left in peace to build a force capable of launching this attack.

An accurate assessment. Tho, personally I disagree with Xox: 40% of the VPs was more than sufficient for a victory condition based on the assumption of a traditional land-war. As sheap has pointed out, my victory was only possible because the 3vp and 2vp provinces - the most important provinces on the entire map - were left basically undefended against a seriously determined raid. If they were castled, I would have been forced to fight a traditional war and 40% of the VPs would have been quite enough. I completely understand why those provinces were uncastled tho. Even in my own empire, only one of my four VP provinces was castled - it just wasnt economically or militarily feasible to put castles on them all.

[Sir_Dr_D]

Or having 3 victory points in one province is too much. If they are spread out more it may be better.

By the way Pangea, I was planning a big attack against you. I was about three turns away. It would have been interesting.

[Folket]

At least I thwarted one of his attacks. But nice gaming everyone. In general I'm not satified with CB and prefer to play vanilla.